Deploying Your Application

The WTP comes with a set of server tools that enable you to work
with servers available from other vendors. Included in the WTP is
support for Apache
Geronimo, Apache Tomcat,
IBM WebSphere,
BEA WebLogic, JBoss, and JOnAS. By providing the server
installation location and a few other parameters (the type and
number of which depend on the specific type of server), you can
configure, start, stop, publish, and debug an application on a
server from within the Eclipse development environment. This
significantly improves the unit testing experience and integrates
the deployment stage of development into your development
environment.

After WTP milestone M3, the WTP project management committee
(PMC) determined that the WTP API had not yet had a significant
chance to be reviewed or to begin being adopted by ISVs. One of the
WTP project's goals is a platform-quality API, which encompasses
binary compatibility between releases (which means the code you
write to extend the WTP on release X will work without modification
on all future WTP releases as well). In order to support binary
compatibility, the PMC decided that it would be in the best
interests of the WTP, its contributors, and its community not to
prematurely declare API. In response to Eclipse convention with
respect to the amount and quality of API that is required of a 1.0
release, the PMC decided to change the release number from 1.0 to
0.7. This convention follows from the first Eclipse release way
back in 2001, which was numbered 0.9 for the same reason. The PMC
decided that the WTP would stay on schedule to release the first
version in July 2005, but that the focus of the first WTP release
would shift to cover only the industrial-quality end user tools.
The follow-up release to 0.7 will be the 1.0 release. The WTP 1.0
release, currently scheduled for December 2005, will focus on the
platform-quality API and contain bug fixes to further support the
industrial-quality tools.

Summary

This article contains an overview of the WTP project, a tour of
its end user tools, and an explanation of its version numbering
with a lead-in to the next release. The WTP is a combined effort
from many companies and organizations to produce industrial-quality
web and J2EE tools for the Eclipse platform and a web and J2EE
development platform that can be extended by ISVs. The tools are
available in the July 2005, WTP 0.7 release. The platform-quality
API will be available in the December 2005, WTP 1.0 release.

You are the WTP community. The only way the WTP will fulfill the
community's goals is if you provide feedback through bug reports and
newsgroup postings, and provide other contributions such as code,
documentation, and promotion, where you can. WTP 0.7 contains
industrial-quality end user tools and is a good candidate for
independent software vendors to explore as a basis for extension.
With the community's help, the WTP will continue to improve, adding
new tools and API, and allow Eclipse to lead the way as the open
source web and J2EE development environment.